- #1
fluidistic
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I am wondering how reliable it is to gauge the intelligence of say homo neanderthalensis by looking at whether they were "artists", and by the object they used. I understand that the fact that they used Levallois technique to cut flint indicates some sort of intelligence. But the lack of, say, pyramids or writings, does not mean they were not intelligent enough to do these things.
Homo sapiens (our species) exists since many decades of thousands of years. However if we had been extinguished about 10,000 years ago and some other intelligent species would have found what we had done till then, they would not have found most of civilization, no writing whatsoever, no abstract mathematics, etc. However these humans living 10,000 years ago were not much different from the ones of today (evolution within this species occurs but isn't that fast either), so even though they did not display these features, these humans would have been fully capable to endure our modern world if they were born today. Their brains had the capacity to learn topology, even though the objects they used were (seemingly) extremely basics.
The point is that I wonder how intelligent would neanderthaliens fare in today's world. If we cannot rely on judging what they displayed to be capable of in their time, how else can we judge? Physical evidence pointed towards a larger brain volume than our species, although the frontal cortex seems to be smaller, etc. But is that any better than looking at their vestiges?
Homo sapiens (our species) exists since many decades of thousands of years. However if we had been extinguished about 10,000 years ago and some other intelligent species would have found what we had done till then, they would not have found most of civilization, no writing whatsoever, no abstract mathematics, etc. However these humans living 10,000 years ago were not much different from the ones of today (evolution within this species occurs but isn't that fast either), so even though they did not display these features, these humans would have been fully capable to endure our modern world if they were born today. Their brains had the capacity to learn topology, even though the objects they used were (seemingly) extremely basics.
The point is that I wonder how intelligent would neanderthaliens fare in today's world. If we cannot rely on judging what they displayed to be capable of in their time, how else can we judge? Physical evidence pointed towards a larger brain volume than our species, although the frontal cortex seems to be smaller, etc. But is that any better than looking at their vestiges?